Microsoft incorporates load-balancing service

Microsoft recently acquired Valence Research, a Beaverton, Ore.-based developer of load-balancing and fault tolerance software for the Windows NT operating system. The big prize in the acquisition was Valence Research's Convoy Cluster software, which will be incorporated as an important new addition to Microsoft's clustering technology and Internet capabilities.

After being renamed Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service, the product will be released as part of NT Server Enterprise Edition later this year.

This technology brings enhanced scalability and fault tolerance to a range of Windows NT-based products, including outbound SMTP mail service in Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Proxy Server, as well as integrated system services, such as Microsoft Internet Information Service, Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol Service and Microsoft Internet Authentication Service. The Load Balancing Service complements the features already provided by NT's Cluster Services to create a flexible and scalable solution for front-to-back high availability in mission-critical environments, including Internet server farms.

Convoy Cluster was already deployed on such sites as microsoft.com and MSN.com, a group of sites representing some of the highest volume traffic on the Internet. So it was a logical step to bring this technology in-house and offer it as part of Microsoft's high-end networking system to enable such tasks as building Internet Web farms with as many as 32 cluster nodes.

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